Aspies For Freedom

I worry what it will be like for my son.  What were some of your positive/negative experiences in school?

I was consider weird by the students and a loner by the teachers.Even among the misfits I was a misfit.Still am.  

There was a lot of bullying which the teachers did nothing about.
Any school that has a zero tolerance policy to bullying and that does not insist on blaming the victim would be a good start.

Milton M. Somers Middle School La Plata MD - I was in the Emotional Adjustment Program and gradually mainstreamed to graduation.  I was harassed moderately for 2  1/3 years.

John Hanson Middle School Waldorf MD - I had been sent to my local school district, and I had some altercations including the flushing one of my notebooks down the toilet.

Thomas Stone High School Waldorf MD - The first year was the worst, especially gym (period 6) my performance in period 7 English suffered.  My locker was glued shut (or jammed shut with the ring from a ball point pen), I was harassed at my locker, and on the bus.  I started eating lunch with other students with the chemistry teacher in grade 12.  Three and a half years.

Hedgesville High School Hedgesville WV - I was the new kid and the authorities did not like my nonconformity, although my grades were good.  One jerk in health class give me grief.

Picked last for every sports team (apart from the one and only occasion when the teacher made me a team captain, but that was in primary school so not germane to this discussion)
Excluded from teenage party scene. To this day I don't know what I could have done to break in...

Middle school was the worst period of my life (bad enough that I became a bit suicidal and had to do independent study). High school was difficult at times, but not nearly as bad as middle school. I went to a small, private high school though... If I would have had to stay in the public school system it might have been a completely different story. University/college is a lot easier than either of them.

Speaking for my husband again (geez, get your own account, man...) he drank himself through high school.  Every day.

Middle school, not sure.  Will have to ask.

I think most people are going to say middle school is a lot worse than high school. I have a feeling that this is because kids start hitting puberty at this time, and don't have the maturity to handle all those raging horomones yet. This leads to a lot of bullying and aggression among both genders. By the time they reach high school, I believe most of them have learned how to control themselves a bit better.

hmmm, Aeolienne, God bless Mr. Prevas for making me VP of the Chess club,, Latin club or both over at Thomas Stone.  Excluded from teenage party scene.  No wheels until I was 26.  Couldn't drive till 21.  Methinks it was their loss.  

I wonder what having gone out with Rachel R. would have been like.  Her dad made her study like crazy and she made top 15 and had scholarships and honors, she was an Air Force brat.  Though I got hung up on looks and stuff, methinks Rachel was closest to me mentally of the girls I knew at Thomas Stone.  She inspired me to study like crazy too, I told her friend Cathy years later.  

Gee, Natalie, why were we so relatively restrained with our hormones in school?  I might have given a cheerleader or two a tough time but I thought it was complimentary.  I was barely malicious if at all, if I lashed out I thought I was doing it in self defense.  Was it because we WEREN'T NTs?

Most aspies aren't immune to the psychological effects of puberty (though I think it might not affect them so pervasively)... I know when I was in middle school I had quite an attitude and was a royal pain in the ass to my family. Fortunately, most people grow out of that stage within a few years.

I cruised through middle school as a somewhat self-centered know-it-all with zero knowledge of or interest in my peer group, who largely reciprocated the sentiment.  I pissed off some of the more studious ones (largely female) by getting about the same results as them academically without actually doing work.

My first year of high school was ok; I was in public school then.  It was not that much different from mid-school, except I had slightly more awareness of my surroundings.  I had a girlfriend in this year but the relationship was kind of short and one sided (and not on my side.  She broke up with me, though.)

The next two years (the second of which I'm in the tail end of) were great because I moved to a gifted school.  I don't know if this is true in general, but my gifted school is highly tolerant of quirkiness and doing things in unconventional ways.  Half the time I sit on my desk in class and I've been told off about twice (one of my teachers also does this, so she can hardly complain.)  Also, at a gifted school my academic level isn't exceptional; it's barely above average, which did wonders for my slightly swelled head.

In MS, I got the tar beat out of me on a regular basis, as I was the proverbial 98-lb weakling. Certain students really didn't like that I got good grades and they didn't. (The excepttion was keyboarding, in which I got an "E" because the teacher didn't have the heart to give me an "F". My tormenters thought that my failing in the class they found the easiest was riotously funny.) Anyway, some students needed a target for their frustrations, and that was me. Bullied, teased, name-calling, etc.

Between MS and HS (9th and 10th grades), I worked construction. First week in HS, we did assessments in PE, and of course three of my tormenters were 1) jocks, and 2) in my PE class. Time came for doing pull-ups, and the teacher had the class sitting together and watching each student do their pull-ups (no pressure, right? ). I evaded detection until the end of class (I was hoping that time would run out and I would be skipped, but no such luck). I walked up to the bar hoping at least not to get the lowest number of the class. The bar was about 6" higher than I could reach, so I had to jump. To my surprise, I caught it at chest-level. I proceeded to do 20 without breaking a sweat or slowing down. I spontaneously decided that was enough, and just stopped, though it felt like I could do another 20. When I dropped down, you could have heard a pin drop, and all eyes were on me. Naturally, I froze. Mercifully, the bell rang, and everyone slowly got up to leave, whispering to one-another.

Later that day, I ran into one kid who was both in that class and would talk to me. I asked what had happened at the end of PE - why was everyone acting so strangely. "You did 20 reps," he said. "Yeah. So?" I replied. "The star jock struggled to get 14. You faced him in front of the whole class, man!" I took this to be a good thing.

No one bothered me after that; it proved to be a marvelous deterrent .

That's one of only two fond memories I have of school, btw. Later that year, I had a major meltdown, and was institutionalized for a little over a year, during which I was tutored. Back in HS for my senior year, no one bothered me because I was "buff" and "dangerous". I still spent lunch period in the library, though.

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Thus far, my son's experience has been much different. He has never been bullied, and his quirks have been, for the most part, accepted. He has a small circle of quirky, immature (in an innocent way) friends.

He does struggle academically, though, and the schools don't seem to know what to do about that. He enters HS in August, and is looking forward to it. (I, on the other hand, have started having nightmares about being in HS again .)

[quote=outsideL00kinN]

Between MS and HS (9th and 10th grades), I worked construction. First week in HS, we did assessments in PE, and of course three of my tormenters were 1) jocks, and 2) in my PE class..................................................... I proceeded to do 20 without breaking a sweat or slowing down. I spontaneously decided that was enough, and just stopped, though it felt like I could do another 20. No one bothered me after that; it proved to be a marvelous deterrent .


Saw THAT coming - GREAT STORY! my husband ( I'm surprised that this was true) said he was not strong in highschool - worked construction after high school - and no kidding - is THE strongest man I've EVER come across.  He has a 46 chest - built like a lumberjack- He says it is amazing what hard work - and good genetics-does for a guy!

Hey AP, are you sure you are in a gifted school? They let you sit on a desk? Doesn't that bother the other students - I have found that "gifted" students like to conform and get upset when others don't... How'd you manage the great school placement?

Oh, yes, my husband had the same types of issues.  He was very small, and thin.  He was beaten up all through school until he started hanging around with the "bad kids" and then somehow got a reputation that he was dealing drugs, he was not, but anyway, he got this rep, and the kids started to leave him alone.  Like I said, he was drunk all the time, but that was about it.

Funny enough, he just matured really slowly.  He is a BIG guy now.  For quite some time, after he really "grew up" 19-21 or so, he still thought of himself as small and thin (98 pound weakling) it was only after I told him that he was intimidating at 6'1" or so and 270 lbs that he understood that he no longer fit that mold, and began to notice people walking around him instead of into him.

Nope, I am five foot two (too) short!  It is pretty funny, he really towers over me.